More In Your Life

Chainsaw auction a tradition

Photo by Daniel Freel/New Jersey Herald - A potential buyer browses the 48 wood carvings for sale, all done by chainsaw carving artist Dayton Scoggins and his son Kenny this past week at the New Jersey State Fair/Sussex County Farm and Horse Show.

FRANKFORD — The display of chainsawed figures ranged from a Native American with an eagle headdress ($500) to a blue moon ($200).

You could have bought a single owl ($475) or a pair perched in a tree ($550). There were more than a baker’s dozen of bear carvings ($250-$450) and two benches with a bear motif ($1,850-$2,300).

And the rabbit ($300) beat the turtle ($225), although another turtle took in $250, thanks to auctioneer Glenn Vetrano, who noted: “We’re in New Jersey and that’s a bog turtle. Everyone in New Jersey knows what a bog turtle is.”

As has been tradition for the last day of the fair for several years, the statues, figurines and signs produced by the live demonstrations of chainsaw carving through the run of the fair were auctioned off Sunday afternoon.

Before the sale began, Vetrano said the fair has averaged about $23,000 from the sale with the money going into the fair’s general fund “to help provide the fun the fair provides year after year.”

And for the past several years, the demonstrations have been done by Dayton Scoggins, a world-renowned and prize-winning carver from Heidleberg, Miss., who was once a tug boat captain.

Vetrano, a former Sussex County freeholder and who currently holds a seat on the Sussex County Community College Board of Trustees, said he was asked several years ago if he would help out by serving as an auctioneer for the sale, since he was a director of the fair in the agriculture division.

After that first appearance, he was hooked.

The normally calm, soft-spoken Vetrano changes character on those fair-ending Sunday afternoons as he urges yet another higher bid from the crowd.

“Hey, work with me here,” he encouraged Sunday as he talked to a crowd of more than 160 people. “I got 250-make it 275,” he intoned, quicker than hands, and two assistants also keeping an eye out for potential bidders, could respond.

“We consistently get about $23,000,” he said before Sunday’s sale began.

An unofficial count of bids from Sunday’s 48-piece sale was right at $23,000.

“Now that’s the type of horse anyone can own,” said Vetrano, who also raises horses, as a horse’s head was wheeled to the front of the display area.

“And he’s better than most. You don’t have to feed him, don’t have to clean up after him and, he’s also a beautiful horse.”

He was able to get a $600 final bid.

Unlike most auctioneers’ call of “going once, going twice,” Vetrano called: “All through? All done!” before he rapped the gavel.

As one of the many examples of bears was brought to the sales area, he intoned, “Here’s your chance to get a bear, a lot easier to buy it than go out and hunt ‘em.”

The small carving — “easy enough to carry back to your car under your arm” — sold for $250.

The show ended with a dragon, which Vetrano got up to a $925 price, and then a green man face under a roof, with a squirrel sitting on top. The price was final, “all through, all done” at $900.